After an Odyssey
by Eliot Rosewater
Summary: Bucky didn't forget anything, he just needed a reminder. And it turned out that nostalgia can be a powerful thing. / After bringing in the Winter Soldier and surviving a trial, the old and aged Howlers reunited with Steve and Bucky.
1. Chapter 1

**Note: Ignore the fact that all the Howlers should be dead and this should be fun!**

* * *

"Hey," Steve said.

Bucky stilled his hands but gripped the whetstone harder. His reflection looked up at him from the blade of his knife. They could say over and over again that they weren't keeping Bucky in a cell, but he knew a cage when he saw one. This was just a more luxurious cage than he was used to; he supposed he ought to be grateful for it.

He rearranged the parts in his head that weren't tied down to anything solid until he knew his face would look like something Steve recognised; Bucky met Steve's gaze. "What's up?"

"Uh, visitors. Feel up to it?" Steve was leaning against the doorframe in a would-be casual sort of way.

( _In or out, Rogers, the doorway is creepy._ )

After all this time, Bucky could still read Steve like a book. Shifty little punk. Bucky looked down and pulled the whetstone across the blade so that he couldn't see himself. Those tiny bits of carbon steel sloughed off the blade; collateral damage for a better cutting edge. The soft grind wasn't enough noise to cover Steve's sigh. Tension built in Bucky's shoulders when he heard Steve walk deeper into the room.

"You don't have to stay in here all the time, you know," Steve said. He sat in the chair orthogonal to Bucky's bunk. The Eyes were out in full force. "You're free to roam the place with the rest of us."

The implication being that all of them wandered around, mindless, from time to time. None of them were all that different from each other.

"I know," Bucky said to the spot of wall just beyond Steve's left shoulder.

"I think Nat's starting to take it personally that you won't introduce yourself."

He chanced a glance at Steve. The Eyes—he looked down and said as casually as he could, "We've met."

"Only as the Winter Soldier and Black Widow. Would be nice for you two to meet as Bucky and Natasha."

Black Widow. _Black Widow_. Bucky tried to remember if he knew that name — or was it a title? Black Widow, or _the_ Black Widow? Specifics were blurry, but he knew that he came across an awful lot of people with absurd titles (himself included).

A shrug shivered out of Bucky. He pulled the stone over the blade again so that his own eyes could peek at him. The question he wanted to ask was _why_. What was the point? Why do anything else when it was so much easier to stay in his cage? They had gotten it for him so that he'd stay in it, so that they'd have somewhere to put him and not have to worry.

It was a good arrangement. A logical arrangement.

Steve had carved out a place for himself here, in the future — the present. Friends, family — Steve had made a new _everything_ from scratch. That sort of thing took a lot of time and a lot pain. Bucky wasn't going to break it any more than he already had. He could just stay in the cage that they'd given him and come out when Steve was feeling nostalgic and lonely. He could put on a show and then go back to his cage when Steve was smiling again.

Bucky could do that; he'd been doing something just like it for decades.

"You go on ahead," he said.

"The visitors are here to see both of us."

"Two weeks ago you were telling visitors asking for me to get the hell off the property or else."

Steve rolled his eyes. Bucky didn't need to see it to know it happened.

"The trial's over now; we don't have to worry about _those_ types of visitors anymore."

If anything, since the verdict, they had to worry about it _more —_ not that it was really something that needed to be worried about. _That_ being Bucky's security (or was it safety?) inside the Avengers' facility. A programmable assassin was valuable and tempted a certain type of person. But while a building full of extraordinary people all but invited that sort of competition, upheaval — invasion — was unlikely.

Steve got up and bumped Bucky's shoulder. "C'mon. It'll do you some good to get away from these four walls."

The gesture would have been friendly seventy years ago. Now, though, Bucky knew it meant that Steve wanted him to come out and put on an encore of the Bucky Barnes Show circa 1937.

How could Bucky say no? After everything, how could he refuse?

Funny thing was, Bucky still remembered all the steps, all the lines. He knew how to be Bucky Barnes. It was just strange that it didn't feel like _him_ anymore. Acting like his old self didn't mean he _was_ his old self. The muscle memory was still there, somewhere, it just didn't feel like _his_ muscle memory.

The whetstone and the knife found their home on the table beside the bunk. Bucky hated to separate them; they were a pair.

"OK," he said to Steve.

—

Bucky was starting to pout again. Steve just couldn't figure it out; he couldn't tell what made Bucky get all sulky like this, but it happened _all the time_. A lot about Bucky was difficult for Steve to get a handle on these days. It was impossible to tell how much distance was right. Steve didn't want to crowd Bucky, but he didn't want to make himself too distant either.

It was already clear that Bucky was never going to _say_ anything when he had a need. Natasha had suggested that Steve just leave Bucky to rot in his room. She said, when Bucky got desperate enough, he'd come out and ask for whatever he needed. Steve didn't have the patience to sit around waiting for that to happen; if one thing was constant, it was the stubborn-as-an-ass attitude of Bucky Barnes. (Not to mention that Steve never could wait for time to be convenient for someone else. He was ready for action when he wanted to be.) So Steve was left with carefully-and-hastily feeling his every move out before acting.

And this little move with the visitors?

Geez, who knew how this would work out? Steve supposed he ought to just be grateful that _he_ had been warned they were coming; the visitors hadn't exactly asked for permission to come. Rather, they'd invited themselves, and good luck standing in their way.

Steve led Bucky through the long hallways of the new Avengers' facility. The walls were buzzing with white noise in some places, deadly quiet in others. Still more sections vibrated with music and chaotic noise. It all depended on the preference of the occupants.

At last, Steve led Bucky into the room Natasha had shown their guests into. It helped that none of the guests were being very quiet, and their voices carried down the corridors. Both super soldiers were able to hear where their guests were and how many they were in number. Behind Steve, Bucky had gone stiff. He kept walking but it wasn't casual or loose anymore. Steve _really_ hoped this wasn't a mistake.

They were greeted at the threshold by, "Well, I'll be goddamned!"

* * *

 **tbc**

 **I tumbl: elle-rosewater**


	2. Chapter 2

**Note:** **Wow-whee and thank you to all who reviewed, followed, and read last time! It's good to be back and seeing familiar names again.**

* * *

"I thought that was your ugly mug I was seein' all over the newsstands," the ancient man shouted. Age had done nothing to diminish the volume or sharpness of his voice—did nothing to dull his wit.

Another one, shorter than the first, but whose mind had not dulled a damn bit either. Still sharp, still seeing every little thing he could give anyone shit about later…despite the glasses. "Didn't even cross my mind that the scruffy yokel on all the newspapers was you until Dum Dum pointed it out," he said while gesturing to the first ancient man. "I said, what? He forget what scissors were, too?"

"You didn't recognise him 'cause you're too proud to get your damn eyes checked."

"Pfft."

A third chimed in rather smugly, "We aren't so green anymore, mate. Nothing to be ashamed of, needing a stronger prescription. Our parts don't work like they used to." He winked between all of them.

Bucky was having a hard time seeing the old men and hearing what they were saying through the acute blur time was making in his head. Their voices were definitely aged, but they didn't sound like that inside Bucky's head. Words were clear and smooth, not so worn. Fewer miles on the ol' vocal cords. Loose images and thoughts in Bucky's mind were falling like raindrops against the backs of his eyes: Sticking for a second, showing him a scene, a memory, before they were splashed away by a new one.

"But I said, nah, that can't be Jimmy. Jimmy's been dead since 1945!" a different old man said.

Inside, Bucky's memories were a whirlpool. He could hardly see the room for the puddles of voices and faces and _trees, snow, canvas snapping, cigarette smoke, was-that-theirs-or-ours?_ forming behind his eyes. A voice inside his head echoed from the vastness, _Those damn 88s sound like freight trains flying through the air. I hate 'em more than those stinging sons of bitches the goons used last time._

Yet another old man said, "We find out he's been alive this whole time and not once did he try to contact us. Not a single one of us."

That voice was the strangest yet, jarring something semi-solid in Bucky's head.

 _Small, cold, metal tags stamped with everything that they thought defined your body. Folded up letters sent off on a man's last breath._

The smugness again: "Bloody rude, you know."

Steve's hand was on Bucky's shoulder. French words were buzzing in his ears; Bucky couldn't tell if they were real or just in his head.

There was a soft, strange sound. A hiccup or a popped bubble. It took a moment for Bucky to realise it was coming from him. He was laughing. The blur wasn't just in his head; it was from wetness building up in his eyes. Something was tightening around his chest. His head a centrifuge, and memories falling out, solid precipitates.

Steve had his hands on either one of Bucky's shoulders and shook him a little. Steve separating Bucky from the rest of the room.

"Bucky," he said sternly. "Bucky. Is this OK?"

Bucky blinked a few times, and, surprisingly, the blur cleared. Mostly. (He hadn't cried that much, most of the mess was still safe inside his head.) Pressure in his chest eased, and a disbelieving breath fell out of him.

"What?" he croaked.

Steve's grip tightened by a few degrees. "Are you OK with this?"

"Am I _OK_ with this?"

"Buck—"

He shrugged out of Steve's hold and dodged around the obstacle Steve was acting as (which took muscle memory that actually felt as if it belonged to Bucky). His stride was uninterrupted—Bucky walked right up to old man furthest from him, the one stooped with something more than age. The old man stood from his seat as Bucky approached — strange that he wasn't afraid as an assassin made a beeline for him. One flesh arm and one cybernetic scooped up the old man, and hugged him as hard as he dared. Maybe Bucky started to cry again; the puddles inside swirled, grew cold, solidified. A solid connection in his head among the whirlpool.

There were hands patting his back; they belonged to the one he was holding and the rest who gathered around him. Just like before, after that _place_ , that factory—… Krausberg! That was right, immediately after escaping Krausberg, when Steve brought him back to the enlisted men, _his_ men, _Bucky's_ men. And they'd all been there, his cagemates and neighbours (that's what they'd called themselves). A lifetime ago, these men had taken Bucky from under Steve's arm and embraced him. Passed him around like a cigarette they were eager to share. Celebrated his continued existence, the way he'd beaten the olds twice (Bucky couldn't remember how he'd beaten anything, but he knew he had).

 _Sarge._ They'd called him _Sarge_ and said _I knew ya couldn't be dead_ and _Rotten Krauts can't even kill a man that's already half dead from pneumonia, don't know why I thought they'd do you in_.

Bucky made a noise like a shaky, breathy laugh. Unbelievable.

"I know what you mean," the one Bucky was holding, Gabe Jones, said. His voice was damp and near to cracking.

There were so many things Bucky wanted to say, so many. So many images in his head were clumping together, forming crystalline, solid images. Context for so many dreams and memories Bucky had been having, at last. After a bit, he convinced himself to put Gabe down— _gently_ —on his feet. Gabe dabbed his eyes with a handkerchief.

"I saw it," Gabe said croakily. By the tone of the words, Bucky knew this was something Gabe had wanted to say for a long time. "I saw you fall, Sarge. Didn't realise what'd I seen for a long time — maybe I didn't know what I was seeing, or I didn't want to believe my eyes….But I saw you fall, Bucky, and I've never been able to forgive myself for not going after you. I saw you fall off that train, and I didn't do a damn thing—"

"S'OK," Bucky said. Amazing: There was a hint of a smile in his cheeks. A twitch. "Water under the bridge, Jonesy. Nothin' you could have done, believe me. Woulda lost this world all the good you did after the war."

( _Was this after the war? Did the war ever really end?_ )

Shaking his head, grateful but maybe still guilty, surely Gabe would never fully forgive himself for everything he'd committed, or _not_ committed, during those years. No amount of time could cure things like that.

Dum Dum interrupted, "Aw, don't get too worked up over it, college. Sarge came out alright, didn't he? Hasn't aged a day in seven decades and got himself one fine can opener."

The plates of Bucky's arm shifted unconsciously, almost as if the arm had a mind of its own and was flattered someone had called it a "fine can opener."

Without thought, Bucky grabbed Dum Dum and hugged him, too. Then it was Monty. Jim, Frenchie — it was his voice that had jarred Bucky so much: there wasn't the faintest trace of an accent to his English. Amid all the hullaballoo, Bucky didn't let it escape his notice that Steve was staying back and being whispered to by Black Widow. She was keeping a hand over her mouth so Bucky couldn't read her lips. Clever. Steve and Black Widow had been joined by Howard Stark's son and the one always covered in bandages. ( _Clint Barton_ , Bucky's brain supplied after a time.)

The audience was hard to care about, even with the way they were smirking and smiling.

"You're so _old_ ," was the first thing Bucky thought to say. It was in response to Frenchie hugging back so hard for a person his age; he was the most enthusiastic.

"Kid hasn't changed a bit," Dum Dum said.

Bucky laughed and wiped his eyes. "Sit down, sit down!" he said and gestured to the furniture. "Sit down, you're all so old."

"Poppycock! We're as old as you are," Dum Dum said, but he was moving toward a couch carefully.

Bucky mouthed the word "poppycock" with a smile on his face, still surprised.

* * *

 **Tbc**


	3. Chapter 3

"We tried writing you," Monty said after labouring to lower himself into a seat.

"You obviously weren't in any damn phonebooks," Dum Dum said.

So strange: His voice dipped into Bucky's ears and came out with a string of echoed conversations clinging to it. _How do these people get through these goddamn hallways? Why's everything gotta be so narrow here, huh, Frenchie? S'like I'm tryin' to crawl through a dollhouse._

The full memory and context dangled just out of reach of Bucky's memory but was teasing a smile out of Bucky's lips nevertheless. He sat beside Gabe on the couch before his knees could go weak with comfort and nostalgia.

"You idiot, they don't print phonebooks anymore," Jim said. He was beside Dum Dum, orthogonal from Gabe and Bucky.

"The hell they don't! Turns up at my door every year!"

Jim squinted through his glasses at Dum Dum. "I forget how stupid you are every time I see you again. Phonebook's all ads and businesses—and you can look that crap up on the Internet. No one in their right mind is registered in the phonebook."

Bucky watched them like a tennis match, caught Steve smirking at him between the bouncing.

"The point I was going to make was that I've spent a fortune in stamps trying to correspond with you," Monty went on as if the other two weren't arguing. "I'd rather like a refund."

"Come on, Cap," Gabe said over the edge of the couch. He waved a hand in summons. "Ain't right until all of us are here."

It was automatic, it had to have been: Bucky smiled at Steve just like he knew wartime Bucky Barnes would have. Maybe it was something that the Bucky Barnes before the war would have done, too. Either way, it wasn't part of an act. Not this time. This time it was natural. This time, just for the breath of time it took to complete the action, all the different revisions of Bucky converged into one, united consciousness.

 _E pluribus unum._

Bucky jerked his head toward an open seat and more words shook free inside: " _C'mon, Steve, we don't have all night. No one reads their letters or eats their dinner until we're all at the table. And we're getting damn hungry._ "

But they hadn't been at a table at the time. They'd been huddled around a fire in a wood that wasn't quite dense enough to hide the smoke from any potential enemies. Booted toes had tapped each other, shoulders had rubbed; back then it had been all familiar, unthinking comfort and touch. Mail had been distributed before they'd left base for the mission. They had eaten rations—were they K-rations? Or D?—around the fire while someone read a letter from home aloud.

Smile breaking his face, Steve ducked his head as he peeled himself off the wall he was leaning against and approached the men. The other Avengers conveniently dispersed around the room, though none of them actually left. Coffee grounds perfumed the air, originating from whichever direction Barton had gone.

Like an indicator activated during titration, the scent lit up Bucky's memory in full colour. Instant coffee was vile and an insult to the real thing, but out in the field, it might as well have been gold, a hug from one's mother. Bucky acutely remembered several meals of instant coffee, sugar packets, and cigarettes consumed in the damp and cold.

"Why not send an e-mail?" Frenchie was saying to Monty. "Much quicker, and it's free."

"Just not the same," Monty said, "might as well be sending someone a store-bought fruit loaf instead of making a proper one yourself."

"Enough with the baking analogies," Jim groused. "We all know you baked for the queen."

Bucky was sure his head would be straining at the seams in a few moments. Every memory was so intense that it left him giddy when a new one began just after the first.

"Yeah," Gabe agreed, "and you used my grandmother's recipe."

"Doesn't matter now, does it?" Dum Dum interjected. "Cap, why'd you have Jimmy on such tough lockdown, huh? I mean, I understand all the loonies running around these days, but it's _us_!"

All of them turned, as one, to Steve. Bucky swore that he saw all of them as he last knew them in 1945 just for a fraction of a second. Uniforms, colour in their hair, youth in their cheeks. And something else about all of them that Bucky couldn't describe. Perhaps it was something that made him distantly sad, like when he remembered the dog he'd had as a boy in Indiana. Gentle disappointment but not surprise or upset. Yearning, wistful for something long gone by… _longing._

No.

"Oh, geez, I thought that would have been obvious," Steve was saying, completely oblivious to the flashback that had just happened, "We've been getting routine death threats!" ( _I'm a death threat to everyone_ , Bucky thought idly.) "Didn't you see those stories about people named Barnes getting all kinds of horrible things sent to them? Just because of their name and the slight chance they were related to Bucky! Tony's been having all of our mail scanned in case someone sends something dangerous."

"What, does anthrax work on your type of people?" Jim scoffed.

A snort and a scoff was issued from the avenging peanut gallery.

"He just didn't want Sarge to see something that would upset him," Gabe said. Dignity and a lack of shame twinkled in his voice.

Steve nodded and held out a hand toward Gabe in thanks. "Exactly. Obviously. So much was already going on with the trial, setting up security, trying to get Bucky to _trust_ the security."

"What, the Avengers aren't good enough for ya, Sarge?" Gabe teased.

(They did have pretty inadequate security measures, according to Bucky's standards. Aside from the residents themselves.)

The words _I don't want to talk about it_ were on the verge of Bucky's lips. But he found that he was comfortable saying, "It's not that. It's just that some things are hard to turn off."

Gabe nodded beside Bucky.

Frenchie murmured, "Vigilance."

All the others— _all_ of them, eavesdroppers included—looked sympathetic. As if they possibly understood.

"If it makes ya feel any better, Sarge, we'd have never known you were cooped up here if wasn't for Natasha," Jim said. "The only one of you so-called heroes who's worth a damn! Before her, we just had to wander around and make scenes at any building we could think you might be hiding at. At least we knew where to send our letters and phone calls to get them ignored when she contacted us!"

It struck Bucky as so strange. The urge to whirl around in his seat and get eyes on the woman was hard to overcome. But Bucky managed to keep the reaction off of his face.

"Thanks for that, by the way," Steve said, presumably to the Widow.

The Widow appeared on the fringes of Bucky's peripheral. A smirk on her face that made ominous ripples in the back of Bucky's memory. Not something he wanted to investigate, those ripples. They… _frightened_ him.

"Someone had to do something," the Widow said. "Sam was complaining about these guys marching on all of the VA meetings too often. It was dominating our Tuesday lunch conversations."

"Well I'd hate for your chats to go stale," Steve sassed.

She traded him a shit-eating grin.

Frenchie was shaking his finger toward Natasha with a sparkle in his eye. Sparkles like before his bombs, Bucky remembered. "Ooh, that Sam Wilson. He's good people. Is he around?"

"Not today," Steve said to Frenchie. To the room at large, "It's only been trouble and danger since Nat got into all of your lives."

There was a collective roll of the eyes and dismissive waves of hands.

"We may be old, but we're not dead yet," Dum Dum said. Turning to Bucky, "I tell ya, this girl can _drive_. And not those damn automatics they're shoving down our throats—she drives those coups the way they were meant to!"

A distant and disconnected part of Bucky mused about what it would have been like to live through the takeover of automatic transmission. _Too passive_ , an older version of himself chimed in. Bucky thought he agreed. Driving wasn't meant to be a passive activity. Driving was action. He supposed he must have once liked cars.

Dum Dum was still going on, "We've been to the track a few times to go drifting. Whoo, she just smokes the track! I tell ya, best way to ruin a set of tires. You ought to come with us some time. You'll love it. Take a look under the hoods of these things, they're amazing."

"Who?" Bucky said at the same time that his brain popped the bubble the past had created in his head. Rusted fenders and greased hands faded from the surface. Undertows in the swirling of his head, pulling the images away. Distorting things again.

"What do ya mean, who? Me and Natasha!"

The Black Widow drifted sports cars with Dum Dum Dugan.

Another true smile, and Bucky said, "I sure have missed a lot, haven't I?"

* * *

 **Tbc**

 **I tumbl: elle-rosewater**


End file.
